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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27022132">shadows of gold</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeonsatdawn/pseuds/pigeonsatdawn'>pigeonsatdawn</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>lauki week 2020 ✨ [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Purple Hyacinth - Ephemerys &amp; Sophism (Webcomic)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Colors, Don't worry, Emotions, F/M, I Tried, Light Angst, Tension, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Tension, Vulnerability, my vulnerable!kiki agenda stays Strong, no one dies, vivid - Freeform, vulnerable!Kieran</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:22:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,627</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27022132</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeonsatdawn/pseuds/pigeonsatdawn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a reason why Kieran White drew in sketches, in the mere contrast of black and white, forming images through lines, curves, and shades.</p>
<p>(basically graphite 2.0.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lauren Sinclair/Kieran White</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>lauki week 2020 ✨ [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1965910</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>shadows of gold</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>(you probably already know what to expect.)</p>
<p>recommended song: <b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H9j3__2ciM">sunflower</a></b> — <em>vincent</em>. (even better when you play it in the part where the one-sentence lines start to appear. i'd just put it on loop. and you can go look up the lyrics too if you want.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span class="par"><b>Kieran White had been drawing</b> in his apartment when, all of a sudden, he heard tentative, consecutive knocks, the sound vibrating through the walls. It took him by surprise, for two main reasons: it was one of the few times he actually lets himself feel like a person, making him vulnerable; but perhaps more concerning was the simple fact that no one was supposed to know about his apartment to begin with. That was, save for the officer whom he also had scared away from his life for good, so he definitely wasn’t expecting her to be showing up on his doorstep in the crack of dawn.</span>
</p>
<p>     In a mixture of weariness and apprehension, he left his drawing room, making sure to keep the door locked and the key hidden out of sight. He headed to his bedroom and took out a dagger, in the unfortunate case that the someone outside was quite literally coming for his life. He chucks in the dagger in his left pocket, and with his left hand subtly hanging behind his body, so as to not show his precaution towards his potential murderer—as an assassin of seven years, he was aware of all the tips and tricks one could take pre-murder—he slowly grabbed the door handle with his right.</p>
<p>     He turned the knob around and opened the door, which revealed a certain redhead, shivering in nothing but a thin nightdress and an insufficient cardigan. Now this concerns him even more, because as he’d initially considered, it wasn’t like the officer to willingly come see <em> him</em>, let alone appear in such a… simply put, vulnerable state. It wasn’t just physically so: the first thing he noticed, really, when he saw her, was the way her <em> eyes</em>, among all other features, seemed to be shaking, the way they seem disoriented, the way they couldn’t seem to quite meet his own. </p>
<p>     And perhaps, it was simply the way pain recognizes pain, the way both of them seemed to often meet their demons in their sleep, the way their past keeps coming back to haunt them no matter how far they try to run from it. </p>
<p>     So before Kieran could think better, he opened the door into his house, prioritizing first above all things Lauren Sinclair’s health, making sure at the very least that she warms up enough to start speaking instead of chattering. Lauren headed in wordlessly, and visibly relaxed at the warmth that engulfed her when Kieran closed the door, blocking the cold air of winter outside. He leaned against the door, crossing his arms, only then beginning to wonder all the reasons she came to his apartment in the first place. To <em> him</em>.</p>
<p>     But Lauren, still true to the end of their albeit broken deal, did a good job in maintaining their impersonality. She sat down on the kitchen stool and allowed herself a few minutes to recover from the cold, before her eyes immediately shifted to a serious, contemplating gaze, looking right in his eyes. “Do you have any information on the operation? I’ve been jumping from precinct to precinct, but they have nothing on any of the people we’ve seen in the Carmine Camelia.” </p>
<p>     Kieran raises an eyebrow at her, questioning her actions, which were understandable in Lauren’s standards but not as a fully-functional human being, which he supposes neither of them were, anyway. “And you felt the need to trudge all the way here, when you should’ve been sleeping? Just to… get some information you could’ve asked me about in the precinct?”</p>
<p>     “In case you haven’t noticed,” Lauren began, as her eyes looked around the apartment, looking for something to just—<em> investigate </em>, somehow, “I actually have a job to do in the precinct, unlike yourself, who has all the time to collect information on your suspects and plan murders.” Lauren’s eyes paused momentarily on the door to his private room, the room where he stores all his sketches throughout the years, and his breath itches—he assumed she could hear this too, given the tranquility of the room—but she did not make a comment about it. He became sure that during the time she was here, when he’d gone to take her outfit from the cave, she had scoured the place like the ex-detective she was. Perhaps, if she did not have secrets of her own to hide, she would’ve questioned without hesitation, but she would’ve known better than to let personal matters go in between their temporary partnership once more.</p>
<p>     So instead she insisted on getting something out of him again, <em> anything</em>. Kieran could sense the desperation in her voice, noting the way her face contorted as she worried over what was to come, what they were working on preventing, and he sighed. As much as he’d like to tell her that everything would be okay in due time, even he couldn’t help but be pessimistic upon the reality that was settling in within them. In fact, it was perhaps why he had been drawing more and more of whatever human he could see—normally, he dared not grant himself the merit of looking at people enjoy their daily activities, not when he had taken so much of that happiness himself. But now, he was doing all he could do to savor them, those feelings of humanity he’d come so close to losing, needing them to serve as a reminder that all he’d done would not be for loss. He’d get to what he was planning to do, all along—he’d get that semblance of closure at last.</p>
<p>     Nonetheless, he wasn’t able to give her the information she wanted, and told her the truth instead: “There isn’t much I know. Usually I try to coax out information from the most careless of them, as you’ve seen me do with McTrevor and the others. I work my way from the bottom.” Kieran walked over to where she was, taking a seat on the stool opposite her, and rested his forearms on the table, interlocking his fingers. “But the pink haired woman you saw, she’s also an assassin, and a gifted one. I don’t doubt that the Seventh apostle’s smart enough to figure out the way we’ve approached things, and has applied extra measures to rid themselves of potential exposure.” <em> The way the Leader made me kill them all, </em> Kieran somberly thought to himself. He wondered if she could hear them; it didn’t matter, she was probably already thinking it anyway.</p>
<p>     Regardless, she didn’t mention it—clearly she had allowed the thoughts of the operation to plague her mind too much, if she was incapable of responding in her normal, mean sense. She expressed her frustration by running through her hair over and over again, messing it up, and Kieran couldn’t help but feel sympathetic for the lady. He knew too, what it was like to be running in circles, getting stuck on dead ends. He’d felt that long before he’d begun his journey of revenge. “Then where do we go from here?” she said exasperatedly, her voice grainy, and he worried that she hadn’t even been <em> drinking </em> enough.</p>
<p>     So he procured a glass of water for her, placing it on the table next to her elbow. She seemed taken aback at the soft and considerate gesture, her eyes widening a fraction, and Kieran forced himself to maintain a nonchalant facade—though inside, he felt his heart flutter and break at the same time; it had been a while since anyone showed such genuine, heartfelt surprise and, if he dare extract the minutest amount of whatever he saw, gratitude, in anyone. He hovered by the corner of the table, his hands in a limbo of clenching and unclenching, and he couldn’t help himself from asking again: “Lauren, why are you doing this?”</p>
<p>     The corners of her lips turned downward slightly, and her eyebrows furrowed. Her gaze dropped, her eyes set on the table. “No personal questions,” she muttered, though her head seemed to be drowning in just the answers he was looking for. </p>
<p>     “Look—” he sighed, trying his best to deliver his worry patiently. “You literally just made your way across the city in one of the coldest nights of the year, in the ungodly hour of 3 a.m., straight into the house of <em> an assassin</em>, and that’s putting it lightly,” he recaps. “You risk associating with an assassin, just so you could take down the leader and whatnot, when you’ll clearly be better off not delving into the Phantom Scythe’s extensively heinous crimes and putting yourself in potential danger.</p>
<p>     “Now I’m supposed to be out hunting Lune. <em> Kill </em> them. Kill <em> us</em>,” he stated the fact clear cut, as if it should have stuck in her head by now. “I’m supposed to kill <em> you</em>. And yet you’re still intent on doing this. For what?” He took his hand off the corner of the table, beginning to fiddle with his clothing instead. “You’d be otherwise safe, in the luxury of your uncle’s protection, and quite literally the entire precinct’s, yet you run straight into the lion’s den. Why?”</p>
<p>     “I—” Lauren squeezed her eyes shut for a second, before looking up at him through her heavy eyelids. “I just don’t want this—the entire explosion they’re planning—to happen again, ever,” she told him honestly, tired of their futile efforts. “Every night, when I try to sleep, I see it happening—everything just… blowing up; Kym, William, my uncle, everyone in the precinct, everyone I know. I can’t let that happen again, now that I know better.”</p>
<p>     “Lauren, you wouldn’t even have to worry about this if you never began lurking in the first place,” Kieran informed her. But only then did he seem to realize the implication of her words. “When you mean ‘again’, you mean… you’ve been through this before.”</p>
<p>     She didn’t reply, and chose to stare ahead of her, not looking him in the eye. “You were in Allendale when it happened, didn’t it?” he questioned softly, his own set of emotions regarding the tragedy bubbling up deep inside him, but he was slow to notice.</p>
<p>     Lauren’s eyes drifted to the tiny flame of the candle, and Kieran could tell she was now fully in reminiscence. For some odd reason, he couldn’t help himself to look away, eyes as fixated on hers as hers was to the small source of light. “I lost a friend, and it was because I was powerless to stop it,” she had been saying, but he couldn’t quite focus on her words as much as he should. It wasn’t until her eyes began tearing up, though, when he seemed to realize what exactly had entranced him so much.</p>
<p>     And why he so often sketched the officer, attentive even in the most minuscule of her facial features, and in particular, her eyes.</p>
<p>     But, perhaps most importantly: why he had hesitated when he first saw her. The unnaturally pensive eyes that burned brighter than flames, even when he was sure he’d seen the brightest of flames he would ever possibly see.</p>
<p>     He saw, for the first time in ten years, the shadows of gold, and everything—the images, the memories, the feelings, <em> everything </em>—came rushing back to him, hitting him with full force like the impact of an explosion would.</p>
<p>     And physically reel, he did. He staggered backwards, realizing <em> what </em> exactly he’d been seeing when he looked into the eyes of Lauren Sinclair. Unlike the way he observed others, he wasn’t looking at the way her eyes gleamed with determination or hazed in memoriam, which were so obvious in her eyes even the least attentive of people would catch them. No, he was looking at <em> his </em> own memories, a time where he could see the color of the air, the way the golden sun glowed and the sky played prism, painted in splashes of rainbows, each sky different than the one before. In particular, he was reminded of a certain morning, the <em> last </em> morning, when he had been visiting the train station, excited to witness for himself its inauguration.</p>
<p>     But when she stared at the flame, that was also what he felt—he relived the explosions. He felt the heat. He saw the light of the fire blind his eyes, over and over again. He smelled the smoke. He felt the pain on the scars of his back, on his front, all over his body. He could see the flame through his own eyes, as it was nothing but a small flame—but when Lauren Sinclair looked at it, it was a fire that spawned in what was once a golden day, a fire that consumed him and everything in him inside out. He felt himself sweat, due to the massive heat that flooded him, the pain he felt from the recollection, and because—</p>
<p>     Because Lauren was there. Because of the simple knowledge that it was her, Lauren Sinclair, who can cause all of his emotions to resurface in a cataclysm, rendering him undone.</p>
<p>     In the midst of it all, he had collapsed onto the ground, trying to regain his composure by taking very heavy breaths. His eyes only went back into focus when Lauren said, “Kieran,” in a voice kin to smoke billowing from ashes, the way they did back then, the way they shoved themselves up his lungs, rendering him incapable of breathing. He felt the same way now, when he looked into her eyes again—though no longer containing the reflection of the fire, it still burned bright nonetheless. He couldn’t pry the color off her eyes, and it hurt more than he thought it would. Tears began to wound up in his eyes—a substance he thought had been taken away along with his color vision.</p>
<p>     “Kieran,” Lauren was saying, already standing up, standing over his pathetic self. “Kieran, what is it? What do you know? Were you a survivor? Does that mean—” she was beginning to get reckless. “Kieran, <em> tell me</em>. What have you been hiding?”</p>
<p>     But he—no matter how painfully <em> vulnerable </em> he was, no matter how much he knew he shouldn’t allow her to see such a side of him—he couldn’t look away; he had gotten himself drunk in the sight, the warm and burning emotions, his poison and his remedy. <em> Her</em>. She was his curse, his blessing. </p>
<p>     A stream of tears rolled down his face, racing their way down his neck. He was a mess. He—the Purple Hyacinth—should not be this way, yet he was. And yet, he couldn’t stop himself.</p>
<p>     Lauren paused, realizing this as well. Realizing this was personal and serious, she asked tentatively, “Are you… are you alright?”</p>
<p>     He shook his head. At least he could do that. “You—you need to leave.”</p>
<p>     And Lauren, stubborn and curious, clearly looked like she wanted to ask. But she was perceptive enough and compassionate enough not to ask, so she nodded instead, before leaving his apartment, closing the door as quietly as she could, not wanting to infringe further on his fragile state.</p>
<p>     Kieran then allowed himself to sob aloud, voice breaking in pieces as he forced all the emotions out. He remained there for a while, trying to pry himself off the memory of what was, of the last time he’d seen color, the last time he’d felt warmth, before the explosion took everything from him and numbed him to the world. He never would’ve thought that the exact same memory could be reflected in another person’s eyes. He never would’ve thought he could feel so strongly again.</p>
<p>     He reached out his hand to the air, grasping a shadow of a hand that was no longer there, and never will be.</p>
<p>
  <em>      That day, more than ever, he missed his mother. </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>there were so much times i could've turned this into crack. i had to force myself to make it angsty, and it is <em>not</em> easy. furthermore, i wrote this when the entire chair x bench debacle went down. that distracted me more than necessary.</p>
<p>i was thinking of what color to do for the prompt, and thought i'd make it black/white (because my idea had been kiki drawing), when i thought: what if we write about NO colors? 🤩 as you can see, my big brain is really just crack-induced brain.</p>
<p>major idea (the shift in relationship) was inspired by suspicious partner/love in trouble, a k-drama that also focuses plenty on right, wrong, humanity, etc. in the drama the guy finds out that the girl's father could have possibly been involved in his parents' murder. the murder was by arson as well, and i was like—ok very good idea. lezgeddit.</p>
<p>comments and kudos are always appreciated &lt;3 thanks for reading as always!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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